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Tag Archives | Science

It’s not pretty, but this 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco, nicknamed the “Car-puccino”, runs entirely on coffee grounds, and goes to show that with enough determination, you can get a car to run off of just about anything.

The car is more proof of concept than actual gas alternative, since it only gets about three miles out of a kilo of ground coffee (56 espressos per mile), but it will manage up to 60mph on the freeway, and is expected to take the makers from Manchester to London on a few tanks of beans. (Though the 210 mile trip will take the equivalent of 11,760 espressos…)

If they can get the science down though, Starbucks just might have a new means of bean transportation.

Anyone who has seen Discovery Channel’s Smash Lab show can probably agree on one thing: It sucks!

Despite being an attempt by Discovery Channel to duplicate the success of their very popular MythBusters show, the combination of terrible projects, awful hosts, and lackluster to simply non-existent science content means it’s one of the worst shows on television.

For most, Smash Lab’s suckiness simply equates to an hour of their day when they can’t watch the Discovery Channel (or two hours if for some god forsaken reason they decide to do re-runs) but for two guys named Eric, it means much more.

That’s because the two Erics run a design studio out of Canada called smashLAB, and now, whenever anyone Googles the name of their company, the results are filled with website after website decrying that “Smash Lab sucks!”

To combat this problem, they decided to not go after Discovery Channel for taking their name, but instead to create a website where they could openly request that Discovery Channel make Smash Lab suck a little less so that positive reviews can start to replace the negative ones:

It might not be enough to save the show, but hopefully their rather funny plea will get the two Erics enough business to survive Smash Lab’s downfall.

Creating the ultimate Jell-O shot might not be the dream of every scientist, but for a few determined drunkards, the thought of a shot that doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled the amount of alcohol found in a typical Jell-O shot was too tempting to resist.

The purpose of this experiment was to determine the highest possible concentration of alcohol attainable in a Jell-O shot, while still maintaining the structural integrity (i.e., the gelling properties) of the gelatin.

Through rigorous scientific testing, two dozen batches of Jell-O shots, and nearly five 1.75 liter bottles of vodka, they discovered that “too much is much, much more than we would have guessed”.

The Miracle Fruit (AKA the Miracle Berry) is a food that makes other sour and bitter foods taste sweet.

Seriously!

By bonding the protein miraculin to your taste buds (or something like that; science isn’t too sure) the Miracle Berry Fruit Tablets can change the way foods taste for up to an hour.

Though the obvious test is to grab a lemon and chomp away like some sort of crazed mad man, another option is to order a pack of the tablets, gather a bunch of strong tasting foods, invite some friends over and host a “flavor tripping” party.

Whatever you decide to do with them, a pack of 20 servings will set you back just $20 from ThinkGeek, so order a set and start tripping today!